If there is one job in the whole world which most of the world would find tedious beyond measure, it is surely proof reading.\u00a0 On the other hand, those who do enjoy the tireless trawling through every word on the page, noting every comma and colon and scrutinising every inverted comma around quotations and titles, probably love it.\u00a0 Putting aside the possible overtones of OCD in such cheery souls \u2013 and they usually are cheery, positively gleeful about every tiny error discovered and exposed \u2013 most of us can only thank them humbly and, possibly, say to ourselves, \u2018If that is a special skill, they are welcome to it.\u2019\u00a0 Somehow it\u2019s hard to visualise a Hollywood blockbuster featuring the exploits of Beady Eyed Ben with his Magical Proof Reading Pupils.
\nAh, pupils, pupils.\u00a0 How many errors do they commit to print in their long school careers as they struggle to become competent writers as well as readers?\u00a0 And how many miles of red ink are spun out on the pages as teachers correct them?
\nActually, these days, possibly not a lot.\u00a0 My generation was brought up on a hearty diet of every written exercise having scarlet lines under the misspelled words\u00a0 and the requirement to write each of these words correctly five times at the bottom of the offending essay or whatever.\u00a0 I say \u2018whatever\u2019 because even in those halcyon days, well before the appraisal of teachers or Ofsted inspections had been invented, this method of pushing us all towards absolute literacy was practised by all teachers in all subjects, not just English. \u00a0Granted it was a grammar school, but still, the intention was to turn out 18 year olds who could spell.
\nI know not the philosophy behind the method, but it seemed to work \u2013 a list too long would be spotted by the mate beside you and there would be guffaws \u2013 \u2018How did you get that wrong?\u00a0 It\u2019s easy peasy!\u2019 \u2013 and you would mutter and swear you wouldn\u2019t make that mistake again.\u00a0 And most of us didn\u2019t.
\nBy the time I taught English, the method had fallen out of fashion.\u00a0 I remember watching, with a large group of English teachers in one of our leafy counties, a presentation in which we were shown a child\u2019s first attempt at an essay in their first week at secondary school.\u00a0 It was full of errors, all tackled with the red pen.\u00a0 A second piece of work from the same child appeared \u2013 just as much red ink, but the child\u2019s work was half its previous length.\u00a0 A third piece appeared on the screen \u2013 red ink still spattering, but the child had written no more than three lines.
\nThe presenter virtually said, \u2018See what you do?\u00a0 You wield that red pen like a sword and a child\u2019s confidence dies under it. What damage have you done? And how dare you?\u2019
\nHow indeed.\u00a0 Sadly, the presenter offered no other solution to what a teacher might well think was a really tricky part of the job \u2013 you\u2019re supposed to teach English, that means reading and writing, what do you do if a child keeps submitting work \u00a0which is misspelled to the point of incomprehension?\u00a0 And what do you do with a GCSE candidate \u2013 and GCSE arrived to supplant GCE\/CSE at around the time of our alarming presentation \u2013 who can write wondrous and even poetic things, but can\u2019t spell? (Answer: dock 5 marks for poor spelling, the answers themselves may be right.\u00a0 And the consequence of that is to send into the world young people who have their C or above in GCSE English but cannot spell to employers\u2019 or universities\u2019 satisfaction because for whatever reason, they did not learn to spell and no one bothered to teach them.)
\nMy own best (worst?) story of the effort to prove that written skills mattered was spending a lesson with Year 11 Set 12 (honestly \u2013 there were 12 categories of ability in English in that school; as Head of English, I was timetabled in an even-handed way for Set 1 and Set 12) endeavouring to offer a template letter of application for a job they might want to apply for when they left school a couple of weeks later.\u00a0 No joy.\u00a0 Most of the class of 17 said they would work for their fathers; one said, \u2018If I want a job, I\u2019ll phone them up.\u2019\u00a0 Game, set and match.
\nAll of that is well before dyslexia as it is now understood was recognised and accommodated, and even longer before text speak \u2013 the abbreviations! \u2013 and computers with spell-checkers arrived to make the production of the written word \u2013 surely \u2013 easy peasy.\u00a0 The computer has perhaps been to literacy what the calculator was to numeracy \u2013 \u2018Miss, I\u2019ve got a machine to do that \u2013 I don\u2019t need to know!\u2019
\nAs a Head of Department and then Deputy and Head, I seemed to spend many hours checking the written reports for pupils produced by teachers.\u00a0 Not a good time.\u00a0 These were highly intelligent, highly educated people, wielders of the red pen not its victims, yet the pressure of report writing in a short space of time at a tired end of term produced an embarrassment of error.\u00a0 There was never time for the conversation which would help explain the mistakes \u2013 \u2018I\u2019m exhausted \u2013 the baby hasn\u2019t slept for a week!\u2019\u00a0 – or plan for them not to happen in future \u2013 \u2018Please exchange your reports with a colleague for proof reading before they go to the Head.\u2019\u00a0 The Deputy got cross there were errors at all, teachers got cross the Deputy had found them, and the Head quailed, waiting for the parent who would return one that got under the wire with a sarcastic sticky-note asking how the school presumed to teach his daughter when the teachers could not even spell!!!\u00a0 (His exclamation marks, not mine.)
\nIf things are easier domestically and in schools with computers and spell checkers, they seem to have disimproved in printing.\u00a0 As a student journalist, I had the joy of spending half a day a week in the print shop with an elderly Dubliner type-setting my copy for the student newspaper \u2013\u00a0 hot metal individual letters, upside down and backwards and \u2013 I swear, though it may be golden nostalgia \u2013 never a spelling mistake.
\nNow I send thousands of words to printers every month and cannot believe the errors which come back to me for proof reading.\u00a0 Sometimes, on the third or fourth reprint, errors which were not there in the first couple of copies have magically materialised.\u00a0 Now, in all fairness, you don\u2019t expect new ones in what should be final copies you are just \u00a0scanning to ensure the last lot of corrections got made.
\nMaybe human beings will always make mistakes.\u00a0 A colleague who had worked in the City once told me his firm – big, important, revered – was officially happy to see up to 3 errors in any page because to spend the time proof reading for greater accuracy was way too expensive.
\nMaybe I should take a leaf out of their book, shrug, accept human frailty and the unreliability of printers and just chill.
\nAnd I will, as soon as I finish checking this article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If there is one job in the whole world which most of the world would find tedious beyond measure, it is surely proof reading.\u00a0 On the other hand, those who do enjoy the tireless trawling through every word on the page, noting every comma and colon and scrutinising every inverted comma around quotations and titles,\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13],"tags":[86,132,175],"class_list":["post-156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ie-today","category-independent-education-today","tag-english","tag-marking","tag-reports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/j-moriarty.co.uk\/hilarymoriarty\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}